The People

Our earliest research to date has been able to take us back to about 1750 for this village. At that time, the most dominant names to exist in this village are Flajnik, Balkovec and Gorše among others. Many of these names still exist here today with some much more diminished from what they once were before. More recently, as with other villages in this region, they have become deserted as many of the original inhabitants moved to larger cities in Slovenia in search of work as well as Canada and the United States.

When we turn to Birth and Marriage Registers (matične knjige) kept by the Catholic Church, we can identify 41 individual households existing in Hrast in the year 1820. Some of these households, and the houses themselves, have since vanished. Other have been since created, usually as delniki, i.e. by partitions of a pre-existing household into two (or more) households.

With the existence of a local church in Hrast, it is interesting to note that the village of Perudina was once a part of this parish as well. Because of this, many of these families share a common ancestry with the people of Hrast.

The families in Hrast are long standing families where ownership of households did not change hands very often. We have found 13 distinct surnames in the oldest church records including, Balkovec (7 houses), Čadonič (1 house), Flajnik (17 houses), Gašparič (1 house), Gorše (5 houses) and Mravinec (2 houses).

Below is a list of the houses of Hrast with both the original house numbers and today’s house numbers (if the house still exists). Also included is the household name (if known).